Life
Will the UN face justice over the Haiti Cholera outbreak?
The contractor is Haiti’s most lucrative sanitation service, Sanco. After the cholera outbreak and the revelations that followed, the US Department of Defense stopped working with Sanco. The United Nations, however, chose not to cut ties with the company. Instead, the UN has awarded Sanco millions of dollars’ worth of contracts over the past 4 years, including the construction of medical buildings which are undoubtedly used to treat cholera patients.
The improper disposal of feces was only the second part of a catastrophic process. The UN has also been blamed for failing to screen peacekeepers – who were sent to quell post-earthquake unrest from Nepal, where a cholera epidemic was underway.
Before September 2010, cholera had not existed in Haiti for more than 150 years. Only days after the arrival of Nepalese peacekeepers, a 28-year-old local was found dead after drinking river water downstream from the site.
“The UN, not intentionally but with the greatest level of negligence, gross reckless negligence, inflicted a disease on the people of Haiti when they were already suffering so much,” Jospeh said.
Source: AFP
